An Internet company is offering $5,000 to allow the Internet the opportunity to name an individual’s baby.
Natasha Hill, 26, was apparently all out of ideas for names last week when she came across Belly Ballot, a website that was offering a $5,000 reward for the fun of crowdsourcing a baby’s name. Hill, an art teacher who in pictures looks like she has some semblance of judgment, jumped at the opportunity.
“I just just thought it was a really cool idea,” she told NBC San Diego. Very insightful.
In truth, Hill’s little adventure isn’t quite as dangerous or daring as the notion of “Internet decides my baby’s name” would have you believe. While it’s true that anybody on the Internet can submit a name for later voting, the real catch is that Lacey Moler, Belly Ballot’s founder and the contest’s organizer, has forbid nominators from suggesting product names or names that are “too crazy.” (Sorry, 4chan.)
Which means that we won’t be getting any more Hashtags any time soon.
NBC San Diego writes that Hill considered such names as Katorah and Winter before turning to Belly Ballot, so it’s not like she’s holding her standards too high. Either way, we thought we’d offer a few suggestions:
- Baauer
- Gangnam
- Bradley Manning
- Chase
- WWWalter
- Crunk Bear
- Mobute Somethingorother
- Lil Poopy
- John Cusack
Update: Natasha Hill will not be receiving $5,000 in exchange for allowing the Internet to name her baby. In fact, it turns out that Natasha Hill is not even the name of the individual at the heart of this story. The woman’s name is Natasha Lloyd, Today reports, and she’s an actress. Lloyd told press outlets that she was pregnant and entering into this contest at the behest of Belly Ballot founder Lacey Moler, who asked her to purport the hoax in an effort to bring attention to her site’s baby-naming contest, which was real and reportedly received a number of applicants after news spread Friday about Lloyd’s falsified involvement. This story has been updated accordingly.
Photo via Epsos/Flickr